Learn Prosper is real. Two out of three jobs available today require some form of learning credential. There are millions of job opportunities every month. The overwhelming majority of those opportunities require that you have education credentials to even be considered. The BUZZ Today has the data. The analysis is in the body of this post.

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics There were 4.0 million job openings in December 2013 and there were 4.4 million hires in December 2013. This makes a total of 8.4 million opportunities to find a new job or career in one 30 day period at the end of 2013.

The argument is over education in the future. There is a lot of debate about whether the forecasts for future jobs are real or not. The Lumina Foundation has a big goal: “To increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60% by the year 2025”. Another forecast of the demand for degree credentials comes from the highly regarded Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce which forecasts that the decade growth ending in 2018 will create 47 million new job openings. Of those new jobs, the forecast is for nearly two-thirds of them to require some post-secondary education.

Recently, some have argued that the value of an education is overstated and that forecasts of future labor demand are flawed. Much of this argument is entangled with the fact that higher education has become too expensive. This fact is true. Higher education in America has become too expensive. But this is a different issue than whether labor markets demand an education.

The BUZZ Today data shows that there are millions of positions available in the labor markets today – 8.4 million opportunities last December alone to be precise. The jobs are there. What you need to know is what it takes to qualify. Here additional information is valuable.

The massive job posting service Monster.com has studied the mix of current job postings on their web site. What they found is that 60% of those postings required a bachelor degree or above. This is data on the job market today, not some contested forecast about future labor market conditions.

There is one additional fact that you need to know about this issue of career opportunities and education. Companies are receiving massive numbers of resumes for every position. To handle this very real challenge, most large companies use resume screening software to qualify job applicants. If your resume does not match the key words and qualifications of the job posting you will not get an interview. The bottom line is that for the vast majority of the millions of job opportunities you must have a degree credential to even be considered for the position. Without the credentials, it is extremely unlikely that you will be invited to interview.

The main conclusion is that an education vastly increases your chances for a new career. For personal guidance on how to most efficiently obtain that education, go to Your Future is Calling. The book is full of helpful guidance on linking “who you are” to careers and the education path you need to get to the future you desire.

Change Career – millions are considering it and there are millions of things to consider. Where to begin?

What is changing is the world around you. At your core you are changing very little. Scientists know that by the time you reach adulthood your brain is wired by your experiences.You are who you are. The first challenge is to match who you are with the new opportunities and make the best choice that fits you. There are lots of career choices, many with very attractive salaries and growth opportunities.The US Department of Labor lists almost a thousand in America alone.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 195,000 in June (2013) and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.6%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Source: What Color is Your Parachute? In March 2012 4,356,000 people found work and there were 3,737,000 job vacancies waiting to be filled. That is a total of 8,093,000 employment opportunities.

So, contrary to what some are saying, the problem is not a lack of employment opportunities. What is confusing is that every month the popular press focuses on the unemployment rate and the net new jobs created in the last month. Recently the new jobs number has been around 180,000 per month. But what is more important to the career change decision, is the fact that every month American companies recruit and hire millions of new employees, not merely a few hundred thousand reported as new jobs.This adds up. Over a year’s time this means that there are actually tens of millions of opportunities to find a job in a new career.

The real challenge for the career changer is to decide the key question: Which of these tens of millions of opportunities do I go after? And even more important – how do I decide? Here are some suggestions to help guide you onto the right path.

Think of a career as what you DO with your life.The key to making the right choice is to make sure that what you do matches who you are as a person. Many go through life trying to figure out what they want to do “when they grow up”. They are looking for purpose and from that personal happiness. Sadly millions never find their answer. The career changer has a unique opportunity to link their doing with their being and from that develop purpose and happiness.

Who you are is fixed. You can learn new skills but in the end none of us get to fundamentally change who we are as an adult. So the first thing the career changer has to do is find out who they are. There are very good scientific instruments to help them do just that. Many are listed in my book “Your Future is Calling.” It is a place to begin.

Once the career changer has an objective read on who they are, they need to look at good information on the doing part of the career choices. Here again, there is good objective information available on the specific career choices available. The very comprehensive web site O*NET provides excellent information on a host of critical career factors including what someone in that career actually does every day. This is the source of information on the doing part of the career choices.

The last pieces of the puzzle are to decide on what to learn and where to learn it for the new career.There are thousands of education programs at community colleges and four year institutions to develop the skills required to qualify for new career opportunities. Once the career that matches who you are is selected, course catalogs, course descriptions and costs are available at college web sites. In addition, the Department of Education maintains a comprehensive site of information about college programs and costs on a site called College Navigator. At this point the main challenge for the career changer is to select the major and the college that is the best buy for the career chosen.

At the beginning, a career change decision feels overwhelming mainly, because it is.There are millions of things to consider. The good news is that the range of choices narrows quickly when the match between who you are and what you do is made at the beginning. There is still a lot of data to look at and evaluate but all of that is relatively straight forward with a good road map. See “Your Future is Calling” for details on how to do this part of the career change decision.